In his book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster”, Bill Gates admits to being an imperfect messenger on climate change, because of his absurdly high personal carbon footprint. He uses the remainder of his book to argue life-style change alone will not achieve zero carbon. We need rapid uptake of new technologies ranging from smaller carbon footprints for a given output to means of capturing and sequestering greenhouse gases.
Without access to the insight available to Bill Gates, it is difficult and daunting to know what action to take. The scale of the agenda, constantly changing messages, a language often couched in fearful generalities and protectionist lobbying from powerful groups of deniers deepen the confusion.
As Christian disciples we are challenged to discern God’s will and become ambassadors of hopefulness, sharing His assurance despite this confusion.
Everyone’s journey of discovery will differ, but hopefully we can help others to act with greater confidence and urgency by sharing our family’s 16-year experience: growing our understanding through incremental steps.
Our first step was to replace inefficient incandescent home-lighting with promising technology of LEDs. Initially too dim for living areas, we replaced bedroom and hall lighting where low brightness was acceptable. The next generation LEDs were now bright enough for living areas, albeit rare and costly.
We took advantage of government grants to install a first-generation solar array generating around 70% of our electricity needs from completely renewable energy. Further savings arose from better loft installation which lowered our gas consumption. Daughters leaving home probably helped further reductions, but it would be churlish to quantify those!
Our next early technology adoption was for an all-electric car, exchanging petrol for more electricity (hopefully renewable). Facing “range-fear” of being stranded miles from any charging station, we knew that adoption would be slow without good charging infrastructure, whereupon conscience kicked in. Will we be mere followers, waiting for “Somebody” to do something! “, or are we called to be true pioneers and lead the way?
Along came serendipity bringing an opportunity to invest at risk in a start-up company committed to building a charging-point network, and we took that as a demand on our stewardship of God’s world. Other changes have continued reducing our footprint, but undoubtedly that decision not to stand idly by, became fundamental to our climate action. Encouraging pioneers to develop desperately needed innovative technologies by investing responsibly has honed our climate conscience.
This is no longer the sole domain of the rich. As little as £10 can buy a small stake in support of small companies dedicated to accelerating essential technologies. Not all will succeed, but none will succeed without backing. Many are so passionate about their contribution to alleviating the climate crisis, that they are often a rich source of education and information, opening up new understanding and enabling genuinely informed prayer. Hopefulness can be grounded in both fact and faith.
We now have small stakes in a dozen different pioneers of innovative energy solutions, including wind, wave, tide, solar and hydrogen cell technologies, alongside four methods of storing renewable energy to be released even when the air is calm or skies cloudy. Our climate awareness continues expanding through toehold in agriculture, farming, water management, and resource recycling. Surprisingly it doesn’t have to cost the earth to have a little bit of influence.
From each of those companies, we discover more about the urgency and promise of successfully taking responsibility for the spoor we leave across God’s delightful creation.
David and Elizabeth Welbourn
You can find more information about supporting start-up companies at seedrs.com, crowdcube.com or similar companies.